Zoophilia: Another Sexual Orientation?

Seto’s (2016) all-encompassing definition of sexual orientation resonates with me. As a sex therapist in private practice, I have worked with many individuals who had “a stable tendency to preferentially orient—in terms of attention, interest, attraction, and genital arousal—to (many) particular classes of sexual stimuli.” I have worked with pedophiles, nepiophiles, hebephiles, ephebophiles, gerontophiles, and with many individuals with other paraphilias. I see it in my practice over and over again—even when these individuals want to change, and they try very hard to change, they cannot change their feelings and their physiological reactions when faced with their specific class of sexual stimuli. Their responses are akin to a sexual orientation.

My Study on Sexual Orientation Toward Animals

In the mid-1990s, when I worked with Christian (not his real name), who sought help for his inability to stop having sex with dogs, I was intrigued. Christian would let dogs in his neighborhood...